Linux on jasoncrowther.com

Yep, I'm a hacker

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

So, recently I started putting together a home music server. I got all the basics up without too much hassle, but didn’t get around actually installing music collection.

After getting back to it, I quickly figured out that the raspberry pi doesn’t put out enough current on its USB ports to drive a 2.5" spinning drive (as manifested by the drive not spinning up and just making a weak clicking noise.) I started looking around for a powered USB hub, but couldn’t find anything cheap enough in town.

Music server on the cheap

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I used to keep all my music on my mac, but after downsizing to a smaller (but zillion times faster) SSD drive, I can’t seem to jam everything in any more. So, I’ve been using a portable 500Gb USB drive to keep my music. Gets the job done, but even though its small, its hassle to haul around.

Setting gnome-do summon binding on Ubuntu 14.04

Fri, 16 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a bug somewhere with gnome-do’s key binding set up interface. It wouldn’t let me set <Control>+space as for the summons action (which I’ve used pretty much since the down of time, or at least as long as I’ve been using Quicksilver on Mac.) At first I thought it was a conflict with an existing short cut, but I couldn’t find anything mapped to that key combination.

Another Stop on Road to VIM Mastery

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

command-t

Quick file searching. Similar to Fast Open in Komodo. Installation is slightly annoying (needs ruby and ruby-dev to configure, and c compiler to build.)

Next Stop on Road to VIM mastery

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Nerdcommenter

Language specific block comments. Oh, yeah, that’s much better.

Not the Legos I had when I was a kid...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Upcoming Lego Mindstorms EV3 to include iOS support | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Want!

Fixing 2 Factor Authentication for Google Talk in Pidgin

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

After noticing that my contact list in Pidgin was a lot shorter than usual, I figured out that I wasn’t connecting to Google Talk anymore.

Some where along the line, I forgot to update my Pidgin account settings for 2 factor authentication . Wasn’t super clear how to do that, but SuperUser set me straight:

Like an iMac, but Ubuntu.

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Meet The $799 All-in-One Ubuntu PC from System76 | OMG! Ubuntu!

Pretty nice, but I don’t see them moving a lot of them at that price point.

Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Prefer GNOME Shell? Download Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog.

Another way to get the Ubuntu you know and love, minus that frigging Unity crap.

Chat in Thunderbird?

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

hmm, somehow, when I wasn’t looking, they wedged chat into the Thunderbird email client. Will have to investigate, if I can tear myself away from OSX’s Messages app.

Linux Hardware Support? Much improved!

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I bought my brother an hp printer/copier/fax for xmas (from newegg.com for $39, shipped; stupid Shell Shocker deals.) Between the time I bought the unit and when he got around to unboxing, I also cut his machine over from windows XP (which was beyond hosed with spyware) to Ubuntu. For my brother’s general web browsing needs, its seems to be working fairly well (except for a couple of media playing issues.)

FC5: A little progress

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Quick update today. Got printing to work. After some googling around, I found lots of advice that the gnome printer config utility was pretty flaky, I blew away my existing CUPS config (generated by the gnome utility) and ran the CUPS config utility (localhost:631 in the browser) straight up. A minute later it spit out a test page. I tried printing from Firefox and that seemed to work fine to.

Project FC5 Update: 0 for 2

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Last night, I had two tasks for my FC5 project:

Get a Parallels VM machine for Windows XP rolling.Seemed to kick off OK after having to remember how to use Parallels’ VM setup utility. A false start or two later, and the XP installed seemed to start fine. It did all the normal setup stuff, got right to the point where it starts up for the first time and blam Parallels craps out with a kernel panic.

Harddrive Replacement

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Monday, I took a day off to concentrate on some chores that never seem to make it off my to do list. On of which was replacing the OS harddrive in my primary PC at home before its impending failure. Starting with a brand new 120Gb ide drive, I figured it would be best to do a dual boot between XP and Fedora Core 5. So, I started by installing XP and allocating it 30Gb. 4 hours and later (suffering throught sp2 + all updates since) and 10 (no kidding!) reboots later, it was ready to roll.

More Fun with FC5

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’d love to ditch XP completely, but I still have a few things that I need windows for. My master plan is to run FC5 as the primary OS and use XP in a Parallels virtual machine. I’ve messed around with Parallels before on ancient history PC hardware (400MHz PIII, 384Mb) and found it pretty impressive. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will be pretty snappy on my newer (but not brand new…) 2.8Ghz 1Gb machine.